Quick note before we begin: I wasn’t sure this post was needed. In my head, I thought we’d covered interior doors and trim somewhere already — maybe with the windows, maybe with the painting installment. My assistant (Claude, at this point) informed me that no, we had not. So here we are.
This will be short. That’s what I always say. Let’s just get into it.
The Doors
For interior doors, we went with five-panel solid wood from Solidhardwooddoors.com, which is Allegheny Woodwork. I don’t remember exactly why we didn’t go with Connor’s doors — I think it came down to price or they didn’t have the style we wanted, and honestly it was probably both. We wanted to move away from the standard four-panel (or six-panel? I’ve been in this house since 2010 and I genuinely cannot remember which one is considered standard). Five-panel throughout most of the house. The doors came primed, which meant they needed to go through our whole pre-paint operation before installation.
The pre-paint operation was sawhorses and wishful thinking. This worked fine except for the part where you flip a door to paint the other side and inevitably ding the wet edge on something. What I know now, and did not know then, is that there are purpose-built door painting rigs that use the pre-drilled holes in the top and bottom of a door as pivot points, so you can rotate it completely without touching anything. This is obviously genius. This is obviously something I found out after we were done. I don’t know what else to tell you.
Exceptions to the five-panel situation:
- Mudroom to kitchen: Two-panel with three-quarter glass. Works well, lets light through, probably should have done more of this.
- Entry into the living room and den: Full glass double doors. The den is currently what my kids call the throne room — eventually it becomes a ground-floor guest room when climbing stairs becomes a topic of conversation. But for now: throne room.
- Two upstairs closets and the laundry room: Double doors where a single door’s full swing wasn’t practical. We probably should have done this in more places.
Trim and Baseboard
Trim came in the Connor package — all poplar, unprimed, so it needed to be painted before going up. We used Behr Decorator White, semi-gloss, from Home Depot. Not glamorous. Held up fine.
The baseboard is somewhere around 5½ to 6 inches — bigger than builder grade, more in period with the house. Casings are three-quarter by four, flat, with a small applied trim piece on the inside edge so they don’t look completely utilitarian. Connor included fancier decorative molding for the downstairs — more ornate profile, more detailed. We tried it. Decided it was too much for what the house actually is. Found a local millwork shop that cut us simpler pieces: three-quarter by three-quarter, small notch and overhang. It works better with everything else. Photos at the bottom so you can see what I’m trying to describe.
Hardware
Emtek. Black porcelain knobs, black hinges throughout. This was one of those decisions Jennifer pushed for that I initially resisted and she was, of course, correct, as is the established pattern. Hardware is the thing people notice without being able to tell you why they noticed it. She understood that. I was worried about the budget. She was right about the hardware.
The Mantle
Came from Connor. Later — after we’d dug ourselves out of the financial crater that building this house put us in — Jennifer had always wanted built-ins flanking the fireplace. We adjusted the mantle to accommodate them. Connor would have done this originally. We couldn’t afford it at the time, so we moved on and revisited when the damage healed. This is basically the recurring theme of this entire series.
One Useful Tip
Pre-painting everything before installation was the right call, even though it added weeks of work. The one thing that actually helped: wax paper under the pieces instead of resting them directly on wood. Less sticking, fewer touch-ups when you go to move them. Still not a perfect system. Nothing about this project ever was.
Gallery below if you want to see how it all came together.
Even that's Odd 
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